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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25607149">The Desert of Omashu</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckingsherlock/pseuds/fuckingsherlock'>fuckingsherlock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Avatar (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Amino Conscripto Challenge, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ba Sing Se, Bending (Avatar), Bloodbending (Avatar), Conscripto 2020, Earth Kingdom (Avatar), Established Relationship, Fire Nation (Avatar), First Meetings, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Water Tribe(s) (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:14:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,510</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25607149</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckingsherlock/pseuds/fuckingsherlock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ironically, it’s when the water runs scorching hot, scalding between his fingers—or perhaps it's blood that is snaking new tributaries beneath his nails—that Sherlock finally resembles his ancestry of firebenders. </p>
<p>How Sherlock had envied them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes &amp; John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Desert of Omashu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="post-full-content">
  <p></p>
  <div class="post-content-toggle">
    <p>The vibrant bustling of Omashu is muted by the distance between them.</p>
    <p>Ironically, it’s when his water runs scorching hot, scalding between his fingers that Sherlock finally resembles his ancestry of firebenders. How Sherlock had envied them.</p>
    <p>Yet, while he’ll never be unattached from the elements like Mycroft, it is when the water runs hot like steam that he latches desperately onto his own, inferior, waterbending.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>“Wherever we go, we must locate the water,” Mummy had calmly explained to Sherlock, what his seven-year-old self had found to be the ultimate crutch of all elemental bending.</p>
    <p>To think only water and earthbenders would ever understand the struggle of bending with finite resources while fire and airbenders reigned free; it was no wonder Mummy’s southern water tribe had been compromised all those years ago.</p>
    <p>Sherlock didn’t say this, of course, because the mentioning of anything beyond the Fire Nation within its walls was forbidden.</p>
    <p>This, Mummy sneaking Sherlock into the indoor garden in the dead of night to teach him the basics of waterbending, was forbidden. Thus, so was Sherlock’s existence as a waterbender.</p>
    <p>But Fire Nation Father was quiet and gullible. His sibling was cold but protective in his own right, taking after his firebending traits.</p>
    <p>Sherlock had remained trapped and preserved in the Fire Nation like the pitiful expanse of nature in the manor’s greenhouse.</p>
    <p>“Water from the Xylem in the stems.”</p>
    <p>“Exactly, Sherlock,” Mummy had smiled. “Now why don’t we share a little dance with the vines?”</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>In the end, it was Mycroft who helped Sherlock go.</p>
    <p>“It’s time, brother mine.” Mycroft had handed him a small rucksack at thirteen, which he later found to be stuffed to the brim with currency—Fire and Water Nations’—and two weeks worth of dried non-perishables.</p>
    <p>“I’ll be on rotation by the Northern Gates at midnight. Continue due-west until you reach the harbour. A trusted friend will transport you to one of the last water tribes.”</p>
    <p>“Thank you,” Sherlock had said, because he hadn’t known what else there was to say.</p>
    <p>“Get ready, before they catch on.”</p>
    <p>Sherlock had gone.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>It is bone-dry and the temperature slips as the moon goddess rouses to conquer her evening sky.</p>
    <p>The water is warm between his fingers—or perhaps it’s the blood—snaking new tributaries beneath his nails. Forming fingerbeds of red. A soft glow, muted like Omashu’s distant lights emanate from where his wide palms splay over John’s sternum, over where he’s been struck with a strike to kill. In their ongoing war, it was never a mercy—always to eradicate anyone possibly affiliated with the Fire Nation.</p>
    <p>For a man of logic, it takes Sherlock a staggering amount of time to realise that John is dying.</p>
    <p>When he comprehends, the water chills and John’s breath hitches in shock.</p>
    <p>He’s going into shock,</p>
    <p>going into shock, going into hypovolemic shock; he needs intravenous fluid--Ringer's lactate solution or packed red blood cells--but while Sherlock knows and comprehends this, Sherlock can’t do anything about it because he’s a measly waterbender, a nurse, he’s no doctor, and no.</p>
    <p>He knows. Their canister of water has already run dry over the expanse of their travels home to Omashu.</p>
    <p>John’s home.</p>
    <p>John.</p>
    <p>Sherlock’s eyes are fixated on John’s unwavering doctor hands that are now wavering.</p>
    <p>John’s usually solid, grounding grip hangs limply in parted fists that no longer contain the strength to clench through the pain. The pale stones that John had created to prove his own earthbending, lay a forgotten dune of sand beside them.</p>
    <p>The wind blows and the sand goes with it. But Sherlock is desperately fighting to keep John from going with it too.</p>
    <p>The stark desert outside the thick walls to Omashu dredges up the harsh reality of their war with the Fire Nation. Every traveller knows that to be turned away from King Bumi’s city is a death sentence. Because in the dichotomy of the temperate, abandoned desert, the water is low.</p>
    <p>“Sherl—?”</p>
    <p>“No—Stop talking, you’ve been shot.” Sherlock wonders if his own cascading tears could somehow make up for the last bit of water he needs in order to heal John. Because John is bleeding out onto a bed sand, under a blanket of stars. Slipping into a permanent slumber and, oh hell, this is not how it was supposed to go.</p>
    <p>When they’d arrived at the grand gates to the Earth Kingdom’s capital, hours earlier, they’d been weary from their weeks of travel, desperate for a meal and kip.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>“That one’s a fire nation spy! Look at ‘em, pale skin an’ dark hair!”</p>
    <p>“He’s a waterbender and he’s with me!” John had bellowed up to the guards on the sandstone wall.</p>
    <p>“And yer just a traitor to King Bumi! Be gone.”</p>
    <p>“Wha—Wait!”</p>
    <p>“We said, be gone.”</p>
    <p>“Don’t!”</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>“No!”</em>
    </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>John.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.</em>
    </p>
    <p class="italic"> </p>
    <p>Nothing was ever supposed to happen to John, but if it were absolutely to happen, this was not how John, of all people, should ever have to go. Not again, because how is this any different from the war?</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>“‘S different.”</p>
    <p>“Shut up. Shut up now. Don’t waste your—“</p>
    <p>“‘Cause you’re h’re.”</p>
    <p>His fingers are numb and the water is frigid. Just how many more tears must he—can he—shed to make John whole again?</p>
    <p>“It’s,” John gasps and Sherlock is there at once, “fine.”</p>
    <p>Fine? How is any of it fine? What is fine? How can Sherlock sew the gaping cavity in the dead center of John’s sternum shut when he doesn’t have enough liquid thread? What does John mean?</p>
    <p>Inconclusive, John isn’t making sense. Why isn’t John making sense? Stupid, you know this; it’s the blood. No, the lack thereof. But how can he stop the blood?</p>
    <p>If it weren’t for Sherlock, the guards wouldn’t have bat an eye. Without him, John would have been safe at home. No shot, no hole; a John who was whole and safe away from Sherlock in another time and another life and the thought quickly evokes, evolves, and spirals into the memory of their first meeting.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>“You need more patience, Sherlock!” From his perch by the makeshift boat pier, Lestrade huffed at Sherlock’s umpteenth failed attempt at freezing the paddle-made waves.</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>Now is not the time, he cannot afford t—</em>
    </p>
    <p>“Oh do shut up! What would you know about any sort of bending, Graham?”</p>
    <p>“It’s Greg!” Sherlock scoffed and rolled his eyes. “And I’m the last one equipped with the waterbending scrolls so watch yourself, young man.”</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>No, stop, focus. John’s bleeding o—</em>
    </p>
    <p>He grit his teeth, fists clenched in irritation. Judging by the sun’s descent in the Northern sky, they’d been at it for nearly three hours and his scarce patience was fraying away to reveal the base of something significantly more hot-headed like his father’s temperament.</p>
    <p>“If you would just give me the scrolls to study instead of using your paddle to splash me while calling yourself ridiculous names—“ The ice beneath Sherlock’s heavy fur boots squeaked.</p>
    <p>Then, splintered into thousands of shards beneath him without another moment’s warning. Lestrade’s eyes widened in panic just as the ice gave out and sent Sherlock descending into freezing arctic waters.</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>Focus!</em>
    </p>
    <p>“Woah, there!” Something grabbed hold of Sherlock and his heavy anorak before he could slip in further than the tips of his mukluk boots. He was dragged and eased gently back away from the new hole in the ice. “That was close.”</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>Oh.</em>
    </p>
    <p>Where Sherlock had just been standing was an unnaturally precise circle that could only mean it was a result of waterbending. His own, of course. Graham always did worry that a firebender’s temperament in the icelands was a recipe for disaster.</p>
    <p>Sherlock and the shorter man were breathing hard with the adrenaline of nearly having been frozen half to death, while Lestrade scrambled to make his way over to check if Sherlock was alright.</p>
    <p>“John Watson,” his hand was calloused and solid, it vibrated with a bender’s strength and energy and Sherlock immediately understood from the natural tan and stocky build that the man was far from home. Just like Sherlock.</p>
    <p>“His name really is Greg, you know.”</p>
    <p>Sherlock had never understood the waxing poetry that equivalated a smile to the sun until he saw John Watson’s.</p>
    <p>And just as the ice had suddenly cracked to give way to something dangerous, John’s introduction cracked Sherlock’s veneer and gave way to something brilliant.</p>
    <p>John Watson.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>The entire village understood that they were practically inseparable after that.</p>
    <p>With their combined body heat, they’d melt the ice bed in Sherlock’s igloo each night, squeezing onto the single-sized slab of ice, bedded by layers upon layers of hand-woven quilts. So much ice shaved off through their shared heat that they had to rebuild the ice bed on an embarrassingly frequent basis.</p>
    <p>Life with John in the Northern Water Tribe was porpoise jerky and quiet words exchanged around the evening community fire. It was Sherlock holding onto John’s mittens whenever he’d gone for duty so he could keep a part of him with him.</p>
    <p>Yet, in the midst of the Arctic, John’s desperation to stay sane, and Sherlock’s waterbending training, it wasn’t so much about love as it was fate.</p>
    <p>Just as how it isn’t so much about <em>how</em> Sherlock keeps John alive, but <em>keeping him alive</em> that matters.</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>Please, focus. Please—</em>
    </p>
    <p>He’s trembling when he comes to and sees John jerking beneath him as the life struggles to stay contained within the unassuming body he’s been given. He’s run out of thread to sew John together again.</p>
    <p>Despite the dire circumstances, Sherlock doesn’t even consider bloodbending until he must.</p>
    <p>He is certain John knows this. Or would know. Will know; he’ll tell him. Apologise for even considering such an intrusive option. Because that’s what people do, John has taught him. At that, would he crack a conflicting smile, half-proud half-terrified?</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>“What about the water in us?” He had been eight years old and bright-eyed with delight at Mummy’s seemingly endless well of answers.</p>
    <p>“I’ve heard of the possibility,” Mummy’s face had taken on a distinctively mournful quality that it did whenever she considered life before the Fire Nation attack.</p>
    <p>Sherlock had never enjoyed the look on her.</p>
    <p>“But it is said to come with a curse. Waterbending is meant to heal, darling, not to puppeteer.”</p>
    <p>Oh, but Sherlock had been fascinated.</p>
    <p>“Promise me, Sherlock. Let this be one thing you and your brilliant mind do not experiment with.”</p>
    <p>There had been something indistinguishable in her gaze, something haunted and far away. He had never seen it before.</p>
    <p>For all his fascination, Sherlock’s desire to avoid causing Mummy any more grief and disappointment had overruled all else.</p>
    <p>“Yes, Mummy.” He had promised and never brought it up again.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>What would Mummy say, if she knew Sherlock considered such a sin now?</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>The water in John’s blood is begging to be slowed.</p>
    <p>This time, Sherlock doesn’t have enough left in him to resist.</p>
    <p>There’s a tug in his gut once behind his liver, a jostle in his appendix, a moral wrongness pinching his vena cava. The abandoned water is icy where it crash lands and absorbs straight into the thirsty sand.</p>
    <p>But what Sherlock’s fatigued fingers weave and orchestrate is warm and alive. It sings in a thump thump thumping rhythm against his thumb that is pressed so delicately against the entry wound like a cork, but it glows like the moon in the northern skies.</p>
    <p>John’s breath catches again.</p>
    <p>Would Mummy cry if she knew?</p>
    <p>The fact that it is John’s blood which he is bending, festers something sharp in his chest. It blossoms painfully, its location precise to match John’s own.</p>
    <p>There is no logic to it—though there never really is ever any logic when it comes to bending the elements—Sherlock’s healing fingers are beginning to swell. His throat works around the lump of understanding that he cannot hold John together by the flow of his own blood for much longer.</p>
    <p>The human body is failing both of them, now. The wet sob that escapes his throat is as foreign as the loose, dry terrain.</p>
    <p>It is then, as the thunderous beating of John’s pulse ebbs and slows, in which Sherlock decides to give everything he can, be it his own blood sweat and tears, to make John Watson’s death an easy one.</p>
    <p>Sherlock arches up to face the abyss above. Uncertain if the exhaustion, tears of agony, love for John Watson is blinding him now. He is numb, tear tracks tacky, and the stagnant desert air drinks up the abandoned water; leaving no trace that there was ever any there to begin with.</p>
    <p>Hands still firmly in place, Sherlock’s eyes flutter shut and desperately catalogue the exact feel of John Watson falling apart beneath him.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>So this is it.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>His eyes flutter open, cheeks still tacky but the desert air around him is no longer painfully parched. He’d just felt something.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>A drip,</p>
    <p>Another.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>A droplet of rain whizzes past his ear and stains the pale sand around John.</p>
    <p>Sherlock wonders if the tears he’s shed for John Watson really are blinding him, wonders if this is the oncoming delirium for his bloodbending.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>Because he simply can’t believe it. Can’t. He can’t bring himself to taste the addictive sweetness of hope, but by God it’s raining, it’s oozing droplets from the Goddess Yue’s moonlit clouds, pouring down into the desert of Omashu.</p>
    <p>The rain is hot where it meets the skin of his exposed neck and forearms. It’s so hot that Sherlock feels himself burning up, he feels John’s blood singing in shock against his radiant hands and suddenly Sherlock is burning bright, like a supernova, bright and brilliant and John is miraculously still clinging on there with him.</p>
    <p>Genius or not, Sherlock doesn’t know if he can comprehend the passage of time anymore or how it feels to have ever had blood-stained fingers because a glowing dome of water has encapsulated them and is healing him too until John’s eyes are seeing again and Sherlock glows like the stars and he heals</p>
    <p class="italic">
      <em>and he heals and he heals and he heals.</em>
    </p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>The water—his waterbending—has helped catalyse John’s fibrinogen into their web-like mesh, scabbing broadly over the wound to temporarily cease blood loss. And while it’s not perfect, it’s enough.</p>
    <p>John gasps like a dying man. And miracle of all miracles, John doesn’t just breathe, John lives.</p>
    <p>With the water cascading sheets around them, Sherlock cries enough for the both of them. Enough for Mummy, too. The weight of John’s bloody soul washes off of his pale fingers as his regaining consciousness allows John to reclaim what was all his.</p>
    <p> </p>
    <p>When the immediate danger passes, they are quiet and wrapped around one another in an icy bed of sand. Sherlock, exhausted by his efforts, and John, exhausted by life, regard the clear starlit sky where Her Moon twinkles innocently down at them.</p>
    <p>Eventually, sleep finds them. And when they awaken, Sherlock will heal and heal and heal until John is whole again.</p>
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My little entry for the Amino Conscripto 2020 Crossover challenge! I used to be a huge fan of the old Avatar universe and found that Sherlock and John slipped right in there nicely. Leave a comment if you enjoyed because this fic has inspired me to go ahead and begin my FFXIV/Sherlock crossover fic oh dear God I'm going to need some encouragement</p></blockquote></div></div>
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